The Secret Lives of Hoarders_ True Stories of Tackling Extreme Clutter - Matt Paxton [9]
Margaret actually seemed to fit the classic type—the older, poor woman living in squalor with her pack of dogs. Hers was a full-blown case in which hoarding had destroyed her house to the point that the living conditions were completely unsafe.
By contrast, Brad and Ellen’s house didn’t look like a typical hoarder situation, but it had become an issue for them because the clutter was making it difficult to keep track of toys and clothing, and they felt embarrassed by how it looked. More important, how to deal with the clutter had started causing arguments that were spilling over into other parts of their marriage. They called me for help because they sensed that if they didn’t address it, the mess (and their bickering) would keep spiraling out of control.
When I first met Li outside her house I would never have guessed that she was an extreme hoarder ... and neither would anyone else, since she hadn’t let anyone except for two of her five children into her home in years. In her mid-sixties, Li was generally well dressed, tastefully made up, and in good shape. She looked in every way to be a pampered suburban housewife, but she was, in fact, a Stage 5 hoarder.
Li and her late husband had raised five children in their four-thousand-square-foot, three-story farmhouse in rural Connecticut. My first visit to Li’s home revealed that the house and the barn on the property were all completely stuffed to the gills with clothing and household items. Li was pretty well confined to her kitchen and adjacent bathroom, hemmed in by the massive amount of stuff that she had purchased during more than a decade of hoarder-fueled shopping.
Li’s house was big enough so that she had room to save all of her now-grown children’s clothes and toys, which is what was at the bottom of the piles. And when her husband died and the children had moved away, Li started filling up the house in earnest.
And then there’s Rick, a tenured college professor who could excuse his saving papers, magazines, journals, and other printed matter—until it got of out of hand. At school, Rick appeared to be just a regular guy, neatly dressed, articulate, and rational. When he talked about his hoarding, he could almost convince people that saving every scrap of information he came across was a natural extension of his job. But one look inside his house revealed that instead, his hoarding was making his living conditions unsafe. His house was a firetrap.
Like Rick, Jackson was a well-educated person with a good job. By all accounts he was good at his job as a social worker—he even sometimes worked with extreme hoarders. Jackson was young, healthy, in good physical shape, and kept his small house clean and orderly—at least until his Blondie memorabilia collection gradually took over, like so much kudzu. He was able to convince himself—and others—for a long time that he didn’t have a problem even though he’d stopped having friends over to visit because he was embarrassed by the clutter. His collection may have sounded like an interesting hobby to outsiders, but it was ruining Jackson’s life. But he couldn’t get it together enough to tackle the ever-growing mounds of stuff.
Katrina was a retired divorcée who had worked as an office manager for a large company. She was an energetic redhead, smart and opinionated, whose hoarding started with a home-based business selling skin care products. She was storing an ever-growing amount of samples, catalogs, awards, paperwork—and lots of inventory. In addition, years earlier, Katrina had been so determined to get a decent settlement out of her divorce that she actually went to law school and got her degree. Now, long after the settlement, Katrina still had boxes, stacks, and filing cabinets full of legal paperwork. Katrina argued that these were very important documents,